(From _The Pagan_)
It stood in the middle of the sitting-room. It was all black, except
for the silver shine of the handles. There were flowers on the floor
beside it, vague blotches of dulled white and yellow. The burdened
odor of honeysuckle, a ground-clinging, unhealthy sweetness, came
to the man’s nostrils; there was a stiff, pungent scent, too, that
he could not place. On the mantel, more flowers; the glimmer of
the bracket lamp washed these feebly--its wick was so low that the
flame seemed next door to dying at any moment. Flowers filled the
stiff-backed chair beneath the lamp. There were two other chairs in
the room, both empty.
Thomas Rice loitered at the open doorway, taking in the sparse
furnishings. He had stood for ten minutes within the dining room,
while Aunt Teby Riggs, Charley’s own aunt on his mother’s side,
whispered harshly all he needed to know, and much that he did not.
“Won’t yer have just a bite, Mr. Rice?” she insisted stridently,
unable to keep her eyes off the twisted half of his face.
“I et my supper already, thank yer.”
“Just a mite of this chicken? Or a cup of somethin’ warm, to stay by
yer?”
“No ’m, Miss Riggs.” He fumbled uneasily with his sweaty felt hat,
drooping from his right hand; his coat hung limp over his arm. It was
a hot, stirless night; serving writs up the county tired feet and
spirit; and the final walk from Belle Ellen to Dolomite was a good
eight miles.
She indicated the crowded hat-rack. “Yer can find room.... Louella’s
eatin’ her supper now.” The shrill syllables rasped his ear.
Her disquieting footfall followed him to the sitting-room. Her arm
gestured past him. “They got it from undertaker Norton, in Bessemer,”
she volunteered chattily under her breath.
“Yes.”
The dining-room door creaked to at last. He stood, rubbing the ball
of his right thumb with his forefinger, as if to cleanse each of
invisible irritating dust from the felt hat. The hat was gone; its
absence was a momentary annoyance, a perceptible gap in things.
There were two chairs. Both were against the same wall, toward the
front of the house. The mantel, the chair with flowers, the two
empty chairs, and ... it.... His restless mind took an unconscious
inventory. Instinctively he put off thinking about what lay within it.
He took the farther chair. They were almost a room’s length apart,
and this one was slightly nearer what had been the man he had loved.
She--the woman that he despised--could hardly think that his mere
sitting there could poison the air for her.
His mind wandered on. Honeysuckles were great flowers for funerals.
That sharp, stiff odor--it was like the look of dahlias, stiff, waxy.
There were some in old man Lunsford’s side yard. Maybe these came
from there. He could afford to give away, especially if it cost him
nothing: flowers ... advice.... Butting into people’s business, with
his skinny little face and weedy little beard, like his own weedy
front yard.
The dining-room door creaked open. A firmer step thudded on the
carpet. She came into the room, a thin hand shading her eyes, to make
him out. Then she sat in the empty chair.
“Evenin’, Louella.” It was her house, now; decency demanded that much.
“Evenin’.” The word was spat out.
She sat stiff on the chair-edge, white hands folded upon black
skirt. Her eyes pointed straight down the room. She said no more; he
kept still. The odor of the kerosene-lamp swayed with that of the
honey-suckles, mingled with a soiled scent he at last imagined must
come from the middle of the room.
She had not meant to speak beyond this. But she should have made it
civil. Maybe she had been a bit short. “Aunt Teby tol’ me yer were
here.”
His answer was framed after a pause. “Yes. I saw her.”
There was nothing more to be said about it. Each nursed sullen
dislike.
The stolid minutes passed. Occasional remote noises entered, looked
about, left swiftly. A pan banged from the rear of the house; a horse
neighed listlessly; doors creaked open and shut with exaggerated
quietness. These subsided. The stillness of death spread from the
middle of the room to the house and the farm without.
He could watch her profile, in the lamp’s withdrawn glimmer. She
stared stonily down the room, away from him; there was no harm in
observing her unbeknown. Her hair was knotted in the back, a skimpy
knot; it lay flat and black above her forehead ... black, like her
dress. Her cheeks were thinner than he remembered seeing her have.
Her teeth stuck out, as always. They seemed the whitest thing in the
room; their stony inactivity held his imagination. He licked his lips
unconsciously.
There had not been a sound from the house for half an hour.
He stirred uncomfortably; the chair squeaked. “It doesn’t set
comfortable, to some,” she said, shortly.
“Not very.”
“Some folks think they’ve a right to be partic’lar.” Her tone was
sour, complaining.
He did not answer. Time drawled along; the tired minutes plodded
unendingly. Funny of Charley to want him and--her, who’d never teamed
a bit. Think of being married to such as her! Who wouldn’t die?...
Well, talk would make the night pass quicker.
He broke the icy silence. “Crowded tonight?” His right hand gestured
a vague circle.
“Yes. Two to a bed upstairs. Aunt Teby and Mary--cot in the kitchen.
Two of the boys in the dining room. Lucky yer don’t have to be fixed
for. Nowhere left.” She laughed without mirth.
His curious eyes travelled around. “Nothing to sleep on here.” They
returned to the middle of the room in fascination, as if he had
waited this excuse to revisit what was there. Afraid that she had
caught the morbid fancy, that there was a gruesome, yet possible,
couch, he hastened on. “Not that I can’t sleep in a chair, though.
But I reckon we won’t do much sleeping tonight.”
“No.” The spiteful warning that she would not trust herself asleep,
with him around, spoke in the sneering monosyllable.
In the hush that followed, his mind returned to the cold body lying
near. He fought against thinking of Charley Hawkins as a corpse; it
was of the young Charley, the chum of the years before the marriage,
that thoughts came. Memory after memory woke to life out of him,
with dizzying rapidity: memories remote from this musty, close room;
memories stained with vivid sunlight on fields of black-eyed Susans,
with shadow-dapple on the creek’s windings, with starry stretches of
windy night. A lively, vigorous Charley Hawkins had featured these
... a good looker, not like himself, his face spoiled from birth....
Yes, Charley had been a lively kid.... Baseball, a scrap, a hay-ride
to the river, especially whenever a girl was mixed up in it--Charley
was chain-lightning. There was that kid widow, Mamie Fagin. Just
one trick she had: when you kissed her--God! Her teeth against your
neck! The teeth were like Louella’s, he reflected, looking over at
Charley’s widow. Maybe Charley liked ’em with teeth that way; they
were always livelier to love.
His mind fondled Louella and the live Charley together for a moment,
then returned to earlier time. After Mamie, there had been her
unmarried sister, Gussie; Charley switched quick.... That scare, when
he confided that they were afraid he’d gotten the girl into trouble!
False alarm, of course.... And the three Bennet girls--not that they
were anything.... His mind lengthened the roll.
Muscles cramped with sitting in the one position, he rose awkwardly.
To cover the act, he walked over to the mantel, and smelled the
flowers. “Pretty,” he grudged.
The woman followed slowly, doing over her duty as guide of the
occasion. “Those were from Judge O’Rear’s; these, Miss Lunsford.” She
named the others, eager to talk, yet letting tone and look lash her
forced listener. Her manner was agitated; the hushed watching must be
getting on her nerves, he judged.
Silently she stood beside him, before that black thing in the middle
of the room. She must say something. Her hand reached out and touched
it. “Plush,” she said.
He nodded.
“The best undertaker Norton had.”
“It came from him?”
“Yes. He won’t have any shiftless funeral,” she concluded with
bitterness.
They went back to the chairs. The impulse to talk dominated her, and
Rice hitched his chair a few steps closer, so that their remarks
might be sufficiently low-voiced not to disturb--well, not to disturb
what lay in the plush-covered thing. Shivering slightly, she drew
hers a bit nearer.
“Shiftless,” she had said. He recalled that this was her favorite
adjective for him--and he Charley’s side-partner, even best man at
the wedding! Never a jaunt or a spree that they had not gone on
together, until Charley took a fancy to Louella. That was Charley’s
luck again; Tom had known Louella longer, fancied her first ...
been mad for her, finally. She was too quiet for Charley then; and
sometimes ... sometimes she hadn’t frowned at Tom, when he sat near
her, itching and miserable. Of course, if he had spoken, she would
have laughed ... with that twisted face of his!
So she and Charley had hitched up. At first, Charley had made him
come around ... insisted. She let him know soon enough and plain
enough, that this was no place for him. “Shiftless,” she’d called
him; she said he was too shiftless to marry.... No, she never
could have meant that, that he should have spoken. She would have
laughed.... Not that!
It got worse. She’d scold Charley sharply when he was around.
Her hints got too pointed; he’d had the good sense to stay away.
Everybody said she had a mean tongue--mean as garbroth.
The woman half faced him now; and her thoughts dwelt on the same
period as his. He had done his best to spoil Charley for her, this
dirty Tom “Grits.” He’d egged him on to drink, and fight, and gamble
... and chase women. Used to come up to their house and sit around in
the way; then tease Charley off into some devilment, when he wanted
to stay home. Too lazy, too backward, to open his lips to a girl;
he’d kept her fooling around, until she had really wanted--well,
not him ... something.... She’d shown him his place at last; out of
the door. A squint-faced loafer, a hanger-on around the sheriff’s
office.... Fine friend for her husband! Charley at least would work
regular. And now “Grits” sat there like a whipped dog, as he always
did when he saw her. Slinking cur of a man!
Something urged him to pretend sympathy for her; she had lost her
husband. “He didn’t suffer?”
“No. He was well and up Sunday; and now--and now--” She pressed her
forehead and cheeks fiercely against her cupped hands; her shoulders
trembled rhythmically.
“There, there.” He tried awkwardly to feign tenderness. Like as not
her tongue had whipped the man to death.
To death.... His thoughts opened unwillingly to Charley now--to
Charley dead. Queer thing, lying so close--couldn’t say a thing, do
a thing!... It wasn’t the Charley he had known; not the same at all.
Preachers must be right; the man he had known had gone--somewhere.
That thing--cold, uncanny, staring through closed eyelids, with hair
and finger-nails still alive, growing horribly--this foul thing was
all that was left. Served Louella right! This was what she had made
of Charley.
His fancy began to weave thoughts of the dead thing and the woman.
She was wrapped in introspection now; his eye measured her from
hair to barked black oxfords. One by one his mind stripped off
the garments of mourning, and what lay beneath the black shell: a
restless fancy cast her in intimate scenes with the man who was
gone. Morbidly the thoughts persisted, were embroidered. What if the
chill, dead, bristle-faced thing should hold her as husband holds
wife! A fit punishment.... Something deep within him lingered on the
details.
The after-midnight coolness slunk between them. She shivered,
wondering if he had felt it. He was her guest, after all. “I’ll get
your coat,” she whispered, leaning close. She got it, and a wrap to
throw around her own shoulders.
It seemed somehow warmer when their chairs were close, she thought.
Of course, Tom Rice couldn’t help being what he was born to be. And
she had thought a lot of him before she knew Charley. If he’d only
spoken!... And--to come here tonight, when he hadn’t been around for
five years ... of course, just because her dead man had wished it....
The friend watched her bent body, as sobs overcame her. The sneer
dissolved from his face. Poor thing! She wasn’t such a plain-looking
woman, even now; she had been decent-looking, as a girl. Even those
teeth; they might--they might at least thrill a man.
Rising silently, she flung herself on her knees beside what had
been her husband. Her weight ground the flowers into the carpet;
the smell of bruised honey-suckle eddied dizzyingly. With terrible
quietness she sobbed and sobbed. The unearthly vigil, on top of
the shut-mouthed hours when she had to preserve some calmness, and
arrange for the funeral, had been too much; the bars were down, the
hysteric flood burst through.
At last her agony shook Tom Rice. The woman would cry herself sick.
He walked to her side in the dimness; the lamp seemed weaker than
before. He stood, uncertain what to do or say. The sobbing pulsed on.
He knelt beside her, stroking her shoulders with nervous hand. A
twitch of repugnance bothered him at touching her. The stroking had
no effect at first; low words of endearment, caressing modulations,
came, and his touch became more soothing. The disgust wore off.
“There, there! I know it hurts. Don’t take on so. It won’t help.
There--”
She became sensible of his presence. Her overburdened heart
overflowed toward him; few men would have done what he was doing. She
turned to him, mouth open wordlessly, pale teeth showing. She clung
desperately to his shoulders, while the sobs twisted and wracked her.
His arms closed upon her; her head burned against his neck. He smelt
the odor of kerosene upon her, where she must have been fixing the
lamps; then the acrid newness of the mourning cloth. His body felt
unnaturally warm where she lay awkwardly bunched against him.
She tried to speak. “He was all I had.” Unnerved again, she threw
herself across the plush top, forcing her face into it. He looked
back longingly at his deserted chair. No, he had helped calm her; it
wasn’t such an unpleasant sensation, despite the smell of kerosene
and new goods ... and an unpleasant, dirtier odor that he had feared
at first came from the corpse, but now localized as coming from her
or her clothes. He knelt beside her again.
His touch quieted her; it made him restless. His mind throbbed now
with her; under any other circumstances, with a woman so close,
he could not hold her so unmovedly. The very vision of her under
other circumstances made him more restless; his touch upon her was
spasmodic, provocative.
Gradually he rose from his knees to a place beside her, sprawled over
the plush. His arm rounded her shoulders, and unconsciously drew
her toward him. Still sobbing, she threw herself against his bosom.
He began to kiss away the tears. The tang of the moist salt in her
eyes quickened him. Their lips met. He felt the pressure of those
insidious, insistent teeth--their touch tortured him.
As they clung, the lamp flared up once, then sputtered out. There was
the stinging odor of burnt kerosene and charred wick. They did not
notice it, nor the clinging sweetness of the bruised honeysuckle.
Tom Rice had one clear thought. The house was crowded; every other
room was filled. Out of the moist fervor of the moment the woman
realized that her head was against the flowers on the floor--the back
of her head, and not her face. She was too weakened from hysteric
sobbing to protest when she found herself lying along the soft
fragrant surface; nor did she longer wish to. He felt on the tense
skin of his neck the touch of those maddening teeth. Their lips met
again in the breathing darkness.
She stirred out of his arms, when the bony fingers of gray-bodied
dawn reached through the closed shutters and touched the crushed
flowers on which they still were.
“Come, dear,” she whispered softly, the gray pallor twisting her
plain face into a grotesque tenderness. She kissed his twisted cheek
with shy eagerness. He took it passively; the taut thrill of the past
hours had gone.
He watched her, as her fingers set the flowers to rights.
Meditatively he replaced the two chairs at the two ends of the front
wall, where they had first been. They should be found so.
The two watchers took up their almost ended vigil. Morning, and Aunt
Teby’s black coffee, should find them so--the morning of the funeral.
[23] Copyright, 1921, by The Pagan Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Clement Wood.
THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN
SHORT STORY